MRS. CHENEY: It's a great pleasure to be here with you today on this
happy occasion. And it is altogether fitting that we celebrate
citizenship and your citizenship in particular here in Philadelphia,
where America became a nation. At Independence Hall, just a few steps
from where we are, patriots signed the Declaration of Independence in
1776, proclaiming to the world our independence from Britain and
asserting that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

We sometimes forget that the journey on which the Declaration's signers
embarked was not an easy one, not one that was sure to turn out right.
Britain was a mighty power, and we were not. George Washington's ragtag
army was pushed out of New York by the British, all the way across New
Jersey and across the Delaware River in the first months after the
Declaration was signed. Washington pushed back in a daring campaign
that began by recrossing the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776 and
dealing two defeats to Britain, one at Trenton and another at Princeton,
but even after that, the going was very tough. Valley Forge, a cold and
starving time for the American army, still lay ahead.

I tell this story often to help me remember and to encourage others to
remember how fortunate we are to be citizens of this great country. The
United States did succeed in our Revolution, but there were many times
when it was a very close thing, and it might have turned out otherwise.
There was nothing inevitable about the path that brought us here-and
there is nothing inevitable about the future. The blessings that we
enjoy are not merely a privilege but a responsibility. We have to work
at freedom and defend it-and I know you, like me, are grateful today to
the fine men and women in our military who fight to keep our nation safe
and secure.

There's another document, less eloquent, perhaps, than the Declaration
of Independence, but even more important, and that is the Constitution
of the United States, to which this building we are in is dedicated.
You have sworn to support and defend it-just as my husband and President
Bush swore to support and defend it when they were inaugurated in 2000
and 2004. The Constitution wasn't created until 1787, eleven years
after the Declaration of Independence, and by the time it was written,
our new nation was in a perilous state. Although we had defeated the
British, we had no president, no independent judiciary, only a Congress
that was so weak it could not raise money to pay the government's debts.
Henry Knox, who had helped Washington cross the Delaware in 1776, wrote,
"Our present federal government is a name, a shadow, without power or
effect." States were fighting with one another, foreign powers were
taking advantage of our weakness, and, most frightening of all, citizens
were rising up against the government. In Massachusetts, farmers
prevented courts from convening and staged a bloody raid on the arsenal
at Springfield.

Which is why there was a convention in Philadelphia in 1787. A new form
of government was needed, one that could strengthen the Union. The
delegates to this convention met through a long, hot summer, and many
times their deliberations threatened to come to an end before they
succeeded in agreeing on a new course for the country. About the middle
of July, George Washington himself was despairing of any successful
outcome. The delegates are "scarce held together by a hair," a Maryland
delegate declared. But they struggled on and by September 17th, two
hundred and twenty years ago today, did have a Constitution, but then a
long battle ensued to get the states to accept it. It was a close
thing-as it has often been for the United States of America, and I think
it is good to remind ourselves often of that, to remind ourselves how
fortunate we are that events have turned out well for our great country
and to remember the role that committed citizens have played.

It takes work to create a country and work to keep a country, and part
of that work lies in appreciating our history-and it is our history,
whether our ancestors were here or not in the early days. Some of my
forebears were Mormon immigrants from Wales who came in the middle of
the nineteenth century, long after George Washington and the other
founding fathers had departed from this life, but what the founders
accomplished affected those immigrants mightily. The one I know most
about was a woman, who though she lost loved ones managed the long trek
to Utah, a frontier wilderness then. But before she died it became a
state. Before she died she was a citizen of a state that was the equal
of all other states already in the Union-and that was because of the
Constitution and the form of government the founders created. This was
not to be a country where states created later would be considered
lesser. Equality was the driving idea, and although not every person in
this country had equal rights when the Constitution was written, the
founders gave us a document that could be changed. And so, even though
my Mormon ancestor could not vote and neither could women whose families
had been here since the Mayflower, the female descendents of these women
voted-because the Constitution was amended in 1920, just as it had been
earlier amended to end slavery and extend the vote to African American
men. The Constitution, the framework for our government, has made it
possible over the past 220 years for the United States to make the
circle of equality in America greater and ever greater, ever and ever
more inclusive.

The document that you have just sworn to protect and defend is worth
your attention, as are so many other aspects of our American heritage,
and I encourage you to read about them, study them, take joy in them,
because the American story is a happy one, not in every detail, to be
sure, but in a steady movement toward justice.

My heartfelt congratulations to you on this momentous occasion. I look
forward to offering each of you my personal best wishes on your becoming
citizens of this remarkable country, our country, the United States of
America.